What is IBM Tivoli Software? We know you want the short version. Steven Wright of Tivoli Software breaks it all down for us in less than 7 minutes on a white grease board. Check it out while you have your morning coffee, afternoon tea, or while you get your miles in on the treadmill or trail with your smart phone. Then visit ibm.com/software/tivoli for more details on how IBM Tivoli Software can help you run a smarter business. .

Learn all about the latest strategies and smarter software for design and development innovation through next generation service delivery from the Integrated Service Management track at Innovate 2010, June 6-10. The Integrated Service Management track at Innovate is a continuation of the discussion and training of the Software Delivery Lifecycle Management stream at Pulse 2010, which showcased how clients, IBM and IBM Business Partners use software delivery lifecycle management solutions to help realize greater value from software investments and optimize business outcomes at reduced cost and risk.

The Integrated Service Management track kickoff will be hosted by Jamie Thomas, Vice President of Tivoli Strategy and Development, formerly of worldwide development, client support and product management for the Rational software brand. Jamie will be joined by Bala Rajaraman, Distinguished Engineer, IBM Software, Tivoli and John Wiegand, Distinguished Engineer, Rational Analysis, Design and Construction.

At Innovate 2010, IBM clients and partners will learn innovative approaches to optimizing the service lifecycle, driving better efficiencies and lowering their TCO. Attendees of the Integrated Service Management track will also learn how to leverage the existing tight integrations with Rational solutions. Specifically, clients can find out how to:

Speed up the deployment processes and maximize resource utilization with automation solutions

Reduce cost and improve efficiency with Visibility and Automation brought about by the integration of Rational and Tivoli

Fully realize the benefits of newer technologies such as virtualization, cloud etc in the dev and test processes that will improve TCO and efficiency

Create a robust dev and test processes that will have minimal chances of failure and cause an outage

Illumination tapped IBM and its Paris-based Business Partner Serviware to build a server farm based on IBM's iDataPlex system. With this system's efficient design and flexible configuration, the company was able to meet the intense computing requirements for the film and save room by doubling the number of systems that can run in a single IBM rack. The entire space used to house the data center amounted to four parking spots in the garage of the production facility, about half of what had initially been allotted. The studio's iDataPlex solution included IBM's innovative Rear Door Heat eXchanger, a water-cooled door that allows the system to run with no air conditioning required, saving up to 40% of the power used in typical server configurations. Overall, the installation included 6,500 processor cores.

"Thanks to the capacity of IBM's rendering technology and the skills of our artists, we were able to bring our creative vision to life through the completion of a wonderfully entertaining film and build the foundation for a large pipeline of projects in development."

Steve Canepa, General Manager, IBM Media & Entertainment industry:

"IBM is delighted to work with Illumination Entertainment on this exciting project to advance digital film-making production," said "The combination of our film industry expertise and powerful, flexible and cost-effective technology solutions is helping to accelerate the adoption of new digital technologies like 3-D into the creative process of film making."

Illumination Entertainment's film "Despicable Me," is being released by Universal Studios July 9.

I can remember the day in 4th grade when I got my first calculator. Other than my "Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots", that Texas Instruments 1030 was THE coolest, most magical consumer product that I had ever owned up to that point. It featured the standard four math functions, buttons for percentage, square root, and pi, and an 8 digit LCD display.

Now fast forward to 2011 and consider the fact that it takes dozens of microprocessors running 100 million lines of code to get your average car out of the driveway, and a complex ecosystem of developers, engineers, suppliers and partners to bring smarter products to market.

From automobiles to meat cases to artificial hearts, today’s smarter products represent a new generation of capabilities that fuse together sensors, actuators, electronics and mechanical systems.

By all accounts, smarter products and services are transforming the world and the way we interact with it, and IBM is at the forefront of all of the above.

Just in case you weren't sold on IBM's commitment to better serve and team with smaller enterprises, here is some hard hitting evidence for you. IBM recently launched the Small and Midsized Business (SMB) web portal around Cloud & Smarter Infrastructure as a clear illustration of how the Tivoli, Maximo, TRIRIGA and Netcool solutions are geared for the SMB space across Cloud, Mobility, Asset Management and Storage.

We fully recognize that SMB customers have different sets of needs and IT requirements than our large enterprise customers . And just to be clear, these are NOT watered-down, leftover, or recycled enterprise level products. Instead, the portal features a portfolio of easy to deploy, rapid-value solutions that are appropriately sized and priced for SMB's.

For example, our new cloud provisioning product includes a "try & buy" feature that allows you to quickly download a free trial. SmartCloud Provisioning delivers computer infrastructure as a service by providing on-demand access to virtual machines and storage in the network. The trial is fully functional for 90 days at no charge, and at the end of the trial period, you can purchase the products directly from the site with just a few clicks.

And if you are interested in interacting with a community for this product, you can visit our developerWorks site for discussion forum for the IBM SmartCloud Provisioning Open Beta Program

The new SMB portal also links to a free trial download of Tivoli Endpoint Manager, so you can experience its capabilities and benefits firsthand. This trial has all features enabled and is good for an evaluation period of 30 days.

As businesses and governments continue to develop and design products and services that are increasingly interconnected, IBM is working with clients to help them build the competencies to manage these products in smarter ways. This week at Innovate, the Tivoli and Rational teams, delivered several sessions to the agenda that demonstrated to the software developers, clients, and business partners how to design develop, deploy an manage smarter products by linking development and operations using Cloud technology. I was thrilled to see the level of interest and enthusiasm from the audience for Integrated Service Management. Many of the sessions were standing room only, including the track kickoff, which had to be moved to a larger room! Sessions that were not SRO were also very popular with nearly full rooms.

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We were lucky to capture Bala Rajararaman, Tivoli Distinguished Engineer and Top Gremlin-Buster, along with Moe Abdula from Tivoli Development, who shared their passion for Smarter Products and Services by integrating the tools, processes and data of development and operations.

Only one week to go until IBM are the key Sponsors at the Government Property Event, at the QE11 Conference Centre in London - Only one week to go until IBM are the key Sponsors at the Government Property Event, at the QE11 Conference Centre in London - http://bit.ly/GCPB1aThe conference aims to help central and local government decision makers deliver a “more efficient, effective and sustainable public sector estate”, and as such, IBM will be discussing our Smarter Buildings initiative, especially discussing solutions such as IBM Tririga (a recent acquisition) and IBM Intelligent Building Management (IIBM). Attendees will be able to attend workshops (one of which IBM are running – detailed below) and network with their peers.We will be speaking during the opening plenary session - Rachel Caldicott, a Managing Consultant for IBM will take the audience through how organisations can achieve and embrace workplace flexibility - what is current good practice and where are we heading?If you are attending the event, please make sure to come and listen to the IBM Smarter Buildings experts at 13:30. Claire Penny and Joe Potter will deal with the question “ICT – Help or Hindrance?” There session will cover the 2011, UK Public Sector Property, Estates & FM Survey Report which provided great insight into the challenges facing Public Sector property managers – and what they were doing about tackling them. Challenges ranged from balancing operational requirements, with the need to demonstrate value for taxpayers’ money, to the need to manage Public Sector assets efficiently. A key finding was that Public Sector financial cutbacks were forcing 28% of Public Sector respondents to rationalise their estates to stay within budget, with 72% of respondents either reviewing or actively reducing their office accommodation.The survey also showed that, far from being a barrier to success, ICT was increasingly being seen as a means to solve problems, with over half of all respondents agreeing that ICT was not a serious issue inhibiting real estate savings but that ICT is part of the solution – not the problem. Finally, over 40% of Central and Local Government respondents are currently planning to change FM and other property service providers. All have cited that access to critical data held by their service providers is an issue.This work session will illustrate how IBM has tackled some of these issues on its own global portfolio. We will show how it is possible to extract, collect and process data within and about our buildings so that not only can the individual buildings be managed more effectively, but the overall portfolio can be sized and shaped to meet business needs.You can also talk to our experts by coming to stand 11, where we will be happy to take you through a demo of Tririga, or IIBM, and discuss the current road map with you.Please follow us throughout the day on @ibmtivoli or @RSwindell, and join in the conversation using #govprop2012If you are not attending the event, but keen to speak to IBM about the sessions highlighted above, then please visit – www.ibm.com/smarterbuildings, email govrisk@uk.ibm.com or call on IBM on 01475898688.

The group is made up of a very diverse audience, including IT professionals, analysts, IBM Business Partners and of course, IBMers.

Members of this group share knowledge, news, training, and events around Service Management solutions, including Tivoli, Rational, WebSphere, Information Management, Storage, Security, DevOps, Smarter Planet, Green IT and Cloud Computing!

So join our group, and initiate a discussion, or weigh on on an existing discussion!